


Spare the tarpit spoil the child

by Cryane (iwantcandy2)



Series: 100 Fandoms Challenge [1]
Category: Jurassic Park Original Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: Archaeology, Character Study, Childbirth, Established Relationship, F/M, Navel-Gazing, Not Beta Read, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:21:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25835671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwantcandy2/pseuds/Cryane
Summary: AU where Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler get married, Alan misses the birth of their first child, and the couple gets contemplative.100 Fandoms Challenge Prompt 36: Birth
Relationships: Alan Grant/Ellie Sattler
Series: 100 Fandoms Challenge [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1874641
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15
Collections: The 100 Multifandom Challenge





	Spare the tarpit spoil the child

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohmytheon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmytheon/gifts).



> I don't know shit about dinosaurs. Did Mongolia have tarpits? Who can say? Not me, because I wrote this in one episode of Bojack Horseman and did not research.

Dr. Grant was not present for the birth of his first child. To be fair, Ellie wasn’t due for another three weeks. And he really wasn’t supposed to be at the dig site that long. He didn’t do fieldwork much these days, since book tours and Mongolian excavations often had conflicting schedules. He had people to do that now, understudies and interns eager to do most of the labor. No, these days he was mostly relegated to the role of supervisor. 

But then the dig got rained out, four days and nights, and the roads were too bloated to get even a Jeep up them. So Dr. Grant was left huddled under canvas tarp, saturated and sullen, and he was so far out of cellphone range that he didn’t even realize he was missing the birth of his first child.

Ellie was a good sport about it, in the sense that one look from her and Alan knew this would be the new ‘guess what crazy thing my husband did’ story to tell at parties. She was exasperated and tired, but she still managed to razz him gently.

“You better not make this a tradition,” she said, reclining on the bed. “You’re gonna give our children a complex.”

“Children as in plural?” he asked, hefting the weight that was his new son in his arms. “I didn’t know we were planning on more of them.”

“We weren’t planning on this one,” Ellie shot back.

She looked half asleep, blonde hair fanned around where her head hit the pillow. 

“Well, you know what they say. Life finds a way.”

Ellie cracked one eye open, mouth twisted in a wry smile.

“You know what,” she said, “I think  _ I’ll  _ be absent for the birth of our next one. Maybe I’ll take a turn gallivanting off to some dig and you can sit around going through labor. What was it this time? More raptor?”

“Protoceratops, actually,” he corrected.

Ellie raised an eyebrow.

“What were you doing around a Protoceratops fossil?”

“Well, it started as a raptor dig, but we discovered what we believe is an intact skeleton of a mother and child.”

“Being fossilized with your kid, huh? Isn’t that every parent’s dream?”

Ellie had asked for it, though, and now Alan was shifting into full lecture mode, baby bounced slightly in his arms to keep it quiet.

“The mother is missing a couple of ribs, and shows signs of having her bones scattered before finally sinking into the tar pits.”

“Raptor?”

“Raptor,” Alan agreed, nodding his head. “The baby, on the other hand, appears to be intact. Dr. Jakur has a theory that the mother died protecting her child.”

“Lot of good it did, if they both ended up in the tar in the end.”

Ellie’s eyes flitted to the lump in Alan’s arms. The baby was starting to rouse, making tiny noises of discontent. With a sigh, she pushed herself up and took the baby from him.

“I guess we’re all just animals, huh?” she said. “Trying to pass on our DNA and hope we don’t fall into a tar pit while we do it.”

“That’s true,” Alan agreed, “but if I had to be an animal, I’m glad it could be a human. And I’m glad our child won’t be playing around tar pits.”

“Not active ones, anyways. I’m sure he’ll want to tag along with you when he gets old enough, out on expedition.”

“Who knows if we’ll still be doing it. I’m getting old, and no one cares about fossils these days. Not with the island still… around.”

Ellie looked like she was going to say something, but then the baby started crying in earnest. Both parents scrambled about, trying to complete the impossible task of appeasing the baby. As they did, they thought about children, and tar pits, and what sort of dangers their own child would stumble into. There was nothing they could really do to fix it, though. They just had to hope for the best. After all, life found a way.

**Author's Note:**

> This resulted from some discord discussion between [Lanni](https://twitter.com/lannlannz) and I about how the third movie makes a weird characterization decision by NOT having Alan and Ellie together, since his whole character arc in the first movie is learning how to like kids. And I have been meaning to start this Herculean challenge, so I thought "Why not?"
> 
> [My Twitter](https://twitter.com/cragboard)


End file.
